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Friday, 21 July 2017

Scraps of Summer

As I haven't still got all the stuff I need to finish my One Block Wonder, I took a change of direction to make a quilt for our branch exhibition, which has to be in by the end of August anyway. The theme of the exhibition is "Scrap Happy" (and the required size is 16'' by 35''), and I like kind of tone it sets. I was (and am) thinking about my kids who are on a seaside holiday with their grandparents - playing on the beach, eating ice-cream, wearing sundresses - you know the lot. So I decided to put together these bits and pieces of summer holidays:

I wanted it to be improvised, so just made a loose sketch and assembled everything right on the quilt sandwich, like this:

You can see the group of fruit already stitched down, and the flowers just cut out and roughly placed in position. I used raw edge appliqué to give it maximum scrappiness, applied little bits of basting glue to keep the pieces in place and stitched them down on FMQ machine setup.

Here is the top part assembled:

And the whole image, without the text:

I didn't take pictures of making the text, because this was the most tedious part of it all - I wrote the letters on freezer paper, ironed it to one side of the fabric, ironed the bondaweb to the other side of the fabric, and then cut out every letter through all the layers. I didn't want the lettering to dominate the quilt, so I chose a fabric with a scrappy feel to it, which kind of breaks the shape of the letters.

I quilted the background with a little curvy pattern (don't know if it has a proper name) in a YLI variegated sandy thread.

I certainly enjoyed making it, this kind of improvised appliqué is my favourite style of work, and I hope I managed to achieved the relaxed, summerly, scrappy, happy look I was aiming for.